I got Screwed at Crimefest 2013, plus DBB goes to Ireland

Above, Muiredach's Cross, 
Monasterboice, County Louth,
 Ireland. Below/right, Ha'Penny
Bridge, Dublin. Photos by
your humble blogkeeper

Eoin Colfer's Screwed, the second "adult" crime novel by the author of the Artemis Fowl series, Half Moon Investigations, and other Y.A. big sellers, was a welcome find in my Crimefest 2013 book bag.

A few chapters into this joke-filled tale about a dodgy nightclub owner in New Jersey, I'm finding much to answer anyone who doubts that jokes and crime are incompatible.

For one, the novel bids fair to tug occasionally at the heartstrings. For another, Colfer manages to work into the story funny jabs at "cool" American speech quirks. He's already made fun of über, reboot, and you the man. Nothing yet about thank you so much, reach out, and reference as a verb, but then, I'm just thirty-six pages into the book.

Meanwhile, enjoy these views from Colfer's native land.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Delta force and other stray crime-fiction thoughts

Clearing my mental warehouse to make way for new ideas. Everything must go!!!

1) I asked Eoin Colfer at Bouchercon 2011 why the characters in his "young adult" Artemis Fowl books, even the non-human characters, were achievers — rich geniuses, elite police officers, and so on  — while the characters in his "adult" crime fiction — the story "Taking on P.J.," the new novel Plugged — are lower on the social ladder: bouncers, shady doctors, low-level hoods. Simple, Colfer said: The Fowl stories are fantasy, the crime stories meant to be believable. What do you think of his answer? Are gritty characters synonymous with greater believability?

2) Colin Cotterill, a fellow member with Colfer of my “WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?” panel at Bouchercon, mentioned off-stage that he'd been part of a crime-fiction event in Germany staged in an operating theater — appropriate for the author of a series whose protagonist is the chief and only coroner in Laos. What's the oddest setting for a reading or lecture that you know of?

3) Mickey Spillane's 2007 novel Dead Street, discussed here yesterday, is full of amusing references to the sexual, social, and political mores of Spillane's 1950s:

"Bettie just stood there smiling in her see-through nightie, her untrimmed delta a refreshing pleasure in these days of bizarre pubic buzz cuts."

Who but Spillane could make pubic hair an object of nostalgia?

 © Peter Rozovsky 2011

Bouchercon 2011 highlights

But first say hello to two friends I met (left and right) at the St. Louis Art Museum after Bouchercon. And now, further highlights of my favorite edition to date of the world's biggest mystery and crime fiction convention:

1) The restaurant near the convention hotel that delighted my three English lunch companions by serving corned-beef bollicks (sic).

2) Quaffing a Schlafly Oktoberfest or two at the hotel bar with Eric Stone, an author new to me whose books I will begin reading once I get done with Bouchercon posts.

3) Trying to keep up with Eoin Colfer and Colin Cotterill during Saturday's “CRANKY STREETS: WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?” panel.

4) The waitress who yelled at Jon Jordan and who, having no truck with tagliatelle, served me instead a plate of "tailgate pasta."

5) St. Louis' Walk of Fame, along Delmar Boulevard in the Loop. Many cities have Walks of Fame, but how many include Betty Grable, Bob Gibson, William S. Burroughs, and Phyllis Diller — on the same block?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Eoin Colfer, or What's in a nickname?

Like me, Eoin Colfer mourns the decline of the clever nickname. I spent my formative summers at a camp outside Montreal where the nicknames included Hack, Ankles, Ekra, Madman, Eyebrows, Goblow, Rabbi, Smedley, Truck, and Mini-Mack, the last two of them women, and not at all unattractive despite possibly carrying a few extra pounds around the hips. I raise a glass to the folks who bestowed all those names, even though one of the names was mine. 

Then I worked a summer at a different camp, where the feeble diminutives that passed for nicknames warned me that my childhood was at an end and that I was passing into a duller, more disappointing world. Greenberg was called Greenie. Sherman was Shermie, and Dubinsky Dubs. OK, there were Schlong and Kid Pubes, but those enjoyed limited circulation, for some reason.

Here's Colfer, from his new novel, Plugged:

"E Bomb? Christ, what have nicknames come to? The problem is that these guys are inventing their own names. No one christens themselves Four-eyes, or Shit-breath. One guy back in Dublin, did six months for Peeping Tom offenses, guys called him Windows 2000. Now, that's a nickname."

What are your favorite nicknames, whether from real life or fiction?

***

Eoin Colfer will be part of my “CRANKY STREETS: WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?” panel on Saturday, Sept. 17, 11:30 a.m.-12:30, at Bouchercon 2011,

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Eoin Colfer writes an adult novel and joins my Bouchercon panel

Eoin Colfer’s first adult crime novel has just appeared in the United States, but I knew he could write adult crime long before I ever heard of Artemis Fowl.

Colfer’s story “Taking on PJ” led off Akashic Books' Dublin Noir collection, and a fine job it did. I looked for more by this Colfer guy and was disappointed to find that his previous writing was YA – for young adults. Then I started reading the books. The Artemis Fowl series and Half Moon Investigations are full of intelligent nonsense and, unlike comparable series by other authors into which I looked briefly, they don’t ever appear to be talking down to their young readers.

So I was pleased to learn some months ago that Colfer had written an adult crime novel and even more pleased last month to learn that he will be part of my “CRANKY STREETS: WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?” panel on Saturday, Sept. 17, 11:30 a.m.-12:30, at Bouchercon 2011, along with Colin Cotterill, Chris Ewan, and Thomas Kaufman.

That novel, Plugged, has already answered a question I hope to raise during the panel and one that hovers over all comic crime fiction: how to balance the crime and the comedy without trivializing the first or overwhelming the second. He does it by giving protagonist Daniel McEvoy, a soldier-turned-bar doorman; funny, rueful lines that McEvoy doesn't know are funny. And a scary wartime past. And an amusing vulnerability. (He's self-conscious about his hair transplant.)

But the YA writer in Colfer sneaks through every couple of chapters, in bits of delightful adolescent silliness, of which this is my favorite so far:

"‘Kronski, you asshole,’ she calls out, in a voice ravaged by thousands of cigarettes. ‘Your tablets gave me the shits. Twenty-six fifty for the shits? Open the door, dammit. I can see you moving.’"

So far, fun.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Up this beanstalk a boy must climb who is not himself a bean: Crime fiction and children's fiction

Readers of Detectives Beyond Borders may know the tale of how this innocent crime-fiction reader unexpectedly found himself reading and becoming a big fan of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books and his Half Moon Investigations.

I was reminded this week of that marvelous discovery as I read the author's note with which Garry Disher prefaces his collection of short stories called Straight, Bent and Barbara Vine. Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, Disher writes:

"depends upon a community of women friends and is given to examining her conduct in personal and private matters. But ultimately she must act alone. It's a rule of thumb of crime and children's fiction that the solution must lie with the hero, not the cavalry."

That makes sense, doesn't it? One might ultimately forge additional links with the heroic tradition in general, but for now, think about that frisson of excitement you feel when Jack kills the giant, Odysseus makes it home, or your favorite fictional cop or P.I. gets to the end of a novel alive.

Can you see any other connections between crime fiction and children's fiction?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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And the award for best line in a supporting role goes to ...

Great opening lines are a frequent topic of discussion, and understandably so. They set a story's tone, they draw in the reader, they set the bar high for the author.

But what about those less conspicuous lines and set-ups that maintain the tone once it has been set? These may not open a story or occur at its climax or some moment of high suspense, but they are the ... well, choose your construction metaphor: the mortar or the bricks or the long-lasting aluminum siding. They contribute to the overall impression without necessarily being the lines you'll repeat to a friend the next day.

I've been reading more of Eoin Colfer's books, which abound in lines of that sort. I'll give you a few, then I'll ask you for some of your own. In Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, the Opal of the title is an evil genius who lies in a coma in a private psychological clinic run by one Dr. Jerbal "Jerry" Argon. You know what the makes his clinic, don't you?: The J. Argon Clinic. Say it fast, only don't say it if there's a psychologist around. He or she may not have a sense of humor.

And here's a description from a story in The Artemis Fowl Files:

"Mulch found burglary much more suited to his personality than mining. The hours were shorter, the risks were less severe, and the precious metals and stones that he took from the Mud Men were already processed, forged and polished."

The character has already been established; this is just a way of embellishing him in an entertaining fashion. And that, I'd say, is one characteristic of a good storyteller.

Now, readers, it's your turn. Think about the book you're reading now. Think about its mood or tone. Then pick a line or two that, in a modest, inconspicuous way, helps create that tone.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Conventions of crime

I’m starting the New Year much as I finished the old one: reading a kids’ book. Once again, it’s Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, this time the fifth book in the series, Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony.

This past summer, I wrote about Colfer’s entertaining spoof of hard-boiled detectives in Half Moon Investigations. In The Lost Colony, Colfer goes beyond spoof to explore and expand upon another crime-fiction convention, which might make this book especially enjoyable for experienced readers of the genre. Once again, Colfer proves not just that he can tell an entertaining story, but that he thinks seriously about crime fiction.

(I won’t say which convention Colfer explores because doing so would arguably constitute a plot spoiler, even though the exploration happens early in the book.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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God rest ye fairy gentlemen (and ladies), and a comical question

I’m not sure what the rate of inflation has been since the late 1960s, but I’m pretty sure that the comic books for which I paid twelve cents back then would still not cost the $9.99 I just paid for Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel. But then, graphic novels have production values that the old-time DC comics could only dream of.

The newer printing processes can produce deeper, much more saturated colors. I suspect that this, as much as any predisposition toward darker subject matter on the writers’ part, is responsible for the look of graphic novels. Why do graphic novelists fill their stories with deep, dark, brooding shadows? For the same a reason a dog licks its … but never mind.

Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel, adapted from Eoin Colfer’s first book about a 12-year-old criminal genius, may be particularly well-suited for such treatment, since much of the story happens underground, in the land of the Lower Elements People – fairies, elves and the like. (Fowl’s antagonists and sometimes allies are members of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance squad, or LEPrec– you can figure out the rest of that one, too. Colfer is, after all, Irish.)

Among this graphic novel’s attractions are the opportunities to see how the characters look and to match them against the mental images one has from the book. The artist and colorist (Giovanni Rigano and Paolo Lamanna, respectively) do a good job, rendering convincing pictures of the hirsute troll that nearly puts an end to Artemis’ butler, the hairy and endearingly amoral dwarf Mulch Diggums, and more. The butler, named Butler, is a tad more gigantic than I'd have pictured, and Butler's sister, Juliet, does not look especially Eurasian, though she is described as such in one of the later novels in the series. Still, the graphic novel looks terrific, if necessarily a bit darker than the novel on which it is based.

Artemis himself looks as one might expect of a boy of such overarching ambition: short, immaculately dressed, his eyes narrowed or shielded behind special eyewear. His eyes widen just once, at a highly appropriate moment at the story’s end.

And now, readers, the question: Artemis Fowl joins Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise as characters who enjoy parallel lives in comics/graphic novels and in crime novels of the traditional, non-graphic kind. Who else has done this?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Skepticism is not just for adults: Another post about Eoin Colfer and Artemis Fowl

I wrote a few months back about Ken Bruen's jaded view of the Celtic tiger and about other crime writers and their salutary skepticism of economic miracles. I have just learned that kids are getting in on the act, or at least authors who write for them. Here's a passage from Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer:

"Holly set the coordinates to the flight computer, and let the wings do the steering for her. The countryside sped by below. Even since her last visit, the Mud Man infestation seemed to have taken a stronger hold. There was barely an acre of land without dozens of their dwellings digging into its soil, and barely a mile of river without one of their factories pouring its poison into their waters."

I've come to realize something else about Colfer now that I've read three of his novels and am into a fourth. It has to do with the old saw about a comic being someone who says funny things, while a comedian says things funny. Colfer is a comedian. He has a knack for fashioning sentences in such a way that even lines not obviously meant to elicit a laugh are amusing. I hope to build a comment around this fascinating and entertaining subject soon.

In the meantime, don't believe anyone who tells you the Artemis Fowl books are just for kids.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Crime-fiction lines that make you laugh

I've just finished one novel by a chuckle-inducing Australian and started another by an equally mirth-provoking Irishman, so I thought I'd give the gift of laughter for Christmas and list some of their funniest lines. Then I'll ask you to tell me some of your favorite laugh-getters or satirical crime-fiction jabs.

From Shane Maloney's Nice Try, a story of love, murder, revenge and Murray Whelan's fight to give up smoking as Melbourne bids to host the 1996 Olympic Games:

"Like an economist, I worked backward, fabricating arguments to fit my conclusions, bolstering them with statistics plucked from thin air."

"According to what I'd read in the papers, he was a key player in preparations for the Seoul Olympics. You know, the ones with the persistent background odor of tear gas."

"At one time, the area had specialized in textile and footwear manufacturing, back before wiser heads than mine decided that the country needed fifteen-dollar Indonesian running shoes more than it
needed jobs."

"My heart, never reliably buoyant, sank. But I knew immediately what I must do. What any reasonable, thinking, politically aware member of the Labor Party would do under the circumstances. I left the scene."

From Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code:

"The other port was in Wiltshire, beside what humans referred to as Stonehenge. Mud People had several theories as to the origins of the structure. Hypotheses ranged from spaceship landing port to pagan center of worship. The truth was far less glamorous. Stonehenge had actually been an outlet for a flat, bread-based food. Or in human terms, a pizza parlor. ... And anyway, all that cheese was making the ground soggy. A couple of the service windows had even collapsed."

"Nobody had a clue what had happened until they replayed the incident on the screen of Kamal the chicken man's camcorder. ... The traders laughed so much that several of them became dehydrated. It was the funniest thing to happen all year. The clip even won a prize on Tunisia's version of the World's Funniest Home Videos. Three weeks later, Ahmed moved to Egypt."

And now, readers, what makes you laugh in crime fiction or at least smile widely?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Non-kid stuff coming from Eoin Colfer

Eoin Colfer's story was a high point of last year's Dublin Noir collection, edited by Ken Bruen. Here's what I wrote about his contribution:

"Eoin Colfer’s `Taking on PJ' is another highlight. It takes a special kind of alchemy to mix violence with laugh-out-loud humor and make both work. No one does it better than Bruen himself, and Colfer is just about as good. It’s no wonder Bruen chose `Taking on PJ' to open the collection. With its accent and its attitude, there’s no mistaking where this one takes place."

I loved the story, looked for more by Colfer, and only then discovered he also wrote for young adults, in the form of Artemis Fowl and Half Moon Investigations. Therefore I am delighted to learn, via Crime Always Pays, that Colfer is planning to write "an adult thriller." If that book is as good as "Taking on PJ," adults have something to look forward to.

P.S.: Artemis Fowl and Half Moon are pretty fine, too.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Eoin Colfer up for an award

With a hat tip to the Bookwitch blog comes the news that Eoin Colfer has made the long list for the 2008 Carnegie Medal, awarded to the best book for children or young adults published in the UK.

I've written about Colfer often on Detectives Beyond Borders, and I expect to read more of him soon. I discovered his work in the Dublin Noir anthology (not a book for children), liked it, looked for more of it, and, though youngsters everywhere will consider me hopelessly out of it, was surprised to discover that he wrote for children. Well, a writer is a writer no matter whom he writes for, and Eoin Colfer is a writer, all right. Best of luck to him!

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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The Eoin Colfer Code

You might be able to help me with a chronological question.

I wondered last week whether young readers would get Eoin Colfer's sly genre-fiction references. I had in mind the first book of his Artemis Fowl series, but I could as easily have been discussing Half Moon Investigations, whose opening monologue offers a 12-year-old's delightful version of the standard world-weary P.I.-novel opening. Perhaps Colfer's books are like the old Warner Brothers cartoons. I loved the cartoons' humor and richness when I first saw them, and I appreciated them anew once I understood the musical and other topical references.

Here's another genre-fiction reference from Colfer — maybe. The title Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code would seem to be a dig at a certain bestseller of recent years. The possibility seems even stronger in the novel's opening sentences:

"For the past two years my business enterprises have thrived without parental interference. In this time, I have sold the Pyramids to a Western businessman, forged and auctioned the Lost Diaries of Leonardo da Vinci ... "

Is that a great dig, or what? One problem: Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code and The da Vinci Code are both copyright 2003.

And now, that chronological question: Is Colfer's seeming dig really a shot at Dan Brown? Is it a highly fortunate coincidence? Or is something mysterious at work — mysterious and deep?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Calling all kids, or Fowl play

As promised earlier this week, I've started Eoin Colfer's first Artemis Fowl novel, Artemis Fowl. Though the news may be old hat to young readers, the novel is a delightful blend of police procedural, science fiction and fantasy.

Here's my favorite bit so far, with a question to follow:

"Holly Short was lying in bed, silently fuming. Nothing unusual about this. Leprechauns in general were not known for their geniality. But Holly was in an exceptionally bad mood, even for a fairy. Technically she was an elf, fairy being a general term. She was a leprechaun, too, but that was just a job."

Anyone who can squeeze world-weary fictional-cop attitude into a paragraph about elves and fairies need not rely on the other world for magic. We adult readers can enjoy the knowing weary-cop reference. The question of the day is: Do young readers get references like that, too, or do they just enjoy the story because it's so much fun? In more general terms, does a book that appeals to children and adults alike appeal to both groups in the same ways?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Family matters

I've just picked up Eoin Colfer's first Artemis Fowl novel after having enjoyed his Half Moon Investigations. Each novel features a 12-year-old protagonist, one a criminal mastermind, the other a private detective.

I also recently discovered an article whose author found Fred Vargas' Have Mercy On Us All reminiscent of Daniel Pennac's Malaussène novels, and I agreed with the observation. (Hat tip to Detectives Literarios.) Pennac and Vargas write about "marvelous tribes" — strange families and eccentric collections of people who somehow get along harmoniously living under one weird roof.

That's two reminders the same week that not all family humor is as dreary, featureless, focus-group-driven and identically unfunny as that to be found on the typical American newspaper's comics pages.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

More "Half Moon Investigations" plus two questions

On the one hand, you have third-rate American sitcoms and the rancid, focus-group-driven family strips that waste acres of space on American comics pages every day. Their idea of humor when it comes to children is the drooling baby, the troublesome teenager, and, most grating of all, the impossibly precocious tyke into whose mouth the "writer" puts words that no child would ever say.

On the other, you have Eoin Colfer's Fletcher Moon, who shows what can happen when a real writer writes about children. Fletcher "Half" Moon, as readers of this blog will know, is a 12-year-old private detective. In Half Moon Investigations, he breaks a case that involves theft (of his detective's badge and a set of turntable needles, among other items), conspiracy and assault (Was the target really a garden gnome?)

Among the book's charms are that young Moon credibly confronts dilemmas familiar from the crime fiction that Colfer loves so well while remaining anchored at the same time in a child's world.

The novel's climax and dénouement pack an emotional punch, partly as a result of Fletcher's having had to be cruel to a girl he admires. Fletcher's letdown after he breaks the case neatly echoes the gloomy perspective of a Philip Marlowe. Yet in the midst of his rather affecting reaction, he remains an authentic twelve-year-old, convinced that the world revolves around him (though this scene happens in a school lunchroom rather than a seedy bar):

"Life was rolling along with no regard for my personal gloom. Kids were chatting, flirting, fighting, and occasionally eating.

"Didn't these people realize how depressed I was? I had turned my back on two things that were very important to me. My chosen profession and an unlikely friend, Red."

Rarely have more charming and affecting thoughts been put in the head of a fictional character, at least not one who was thinking them in a school lunch hall.
=========================

Here are the questions; feel free to seek help from a young person of your acquaintance: What's your favorite children's or young adults' crime story? What does such a story have to do in order both to work as crime fiction and be suitable for and attractive to its intended age group?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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"Half Moon Investigations" by Eoin Colfer

I've wanted to read more of Eoin Colfer since I found his short story "Taking on PJ," a hilarous tale of two small-time crooks trying to avoid a beating and worse at the hands of a true tough guy.

Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series, has a nice career going as an author of books for children and teenagers, though, and does not seem especially likely to grow up any time soon. So I decided to grow down and try one of his young people's crime books.

Here's the opening of Half Moon Investigations:

My name is Moon. Fletcher Moon. And I'm a private detective. In my twelve years on this spinning ball we call Earth, I've seen a lot of things normal people never see. I've seen lunch boxes stripped of everything except fruit. I've seen counterfeit homework networks that operated in five counties, and I've seen truckloads of candy taken from babies.

A child who reads that may just develop an affectionate attachment to crime fiction. Adults may like it, too. I do.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007
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It's noir, but is it always Dublin?

It's an odd collection so far, its oddity not entirely explained by Ken Bruen's introduction: "At first, it was straightforward — Dublin authors to write on their city ... Then we turned the concept on its head, as you do in noir. The Irish are fascinated by how we appear to the world, so let's have a look, we thought, at how this city appears from the outside."

The result is an odd assortment of stories from American, British, Irish and Canadian writers, Eoin Colfer, Laura Lippman, Jim Fusilli, Olen Steinhauer, Reed Farrel Coleman and Bruen himself among them. Why odd? Because there are some terrific stories here, only some left me wondering what they had to do with Dublin or Ireland. With others, the connection was there, but self-conscious and seemingly grafted on as an afterthought. In one or two, the dialect and pronunciation were grating. Bruen writes that "You won't find many leprechauns or bodhráns here — and not one top o' the mornin'." Fair enough, but a pack of writers who make their characters say "feckin' this" and "feckin' that" all the time can be just as bad.

What binds the collection, then? Well, a number of men wind up bound, to chairs or to beds, victims or potential victims of revenge. Two of the collection’s best stories are revenge tales, from Craig McDonald and Laura Lippman, McDonald’s because of a clever twist and Lippman’s, noirest of noir, true to the bleak spirit of the genre but new all the same, with a punch-in-the-gut double twist. I also like Duane Swierczynski’s “Lonely and Gone,” dark as its title and with a canny use of untranslated Irish Gaelic that adds to the strange, buzzing, off-kilter atmosphere. And John Rickards appears to have torn up whatever guidelines he was given when he wrote his weird, paranoid, hilarious supernatural romp, "Wish."

Eoin Colfer’s “Taking on PJ” is another highlight. It takes a special kind of alchemy to mix violence with laugh-out-loud humor and make both work. No one does it better than Bruen himself, and Colfer is just about as good. It’s no wonder Bruen chose “Taking on PJ” to open the collection. With its accent and its attitude, there’s no mistaking where this one takes place.

(Click here for the complete table of contents of Dublin Noir.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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